Sovereign AI is a tagline used to describe efforts by different nations to establish their own AI supercomputers, entirely within their countries, to allow them to develop their own artificial intelligence capabilities without depending on foreign (US-based) cloud service providers.
Here are a few key sovereign AI efforts:
Notably, there is no US sovereign AI effort because all AI effort is US-sovereign by default. However, Genesis is positioning itself as US-sovereign in the sense that its infrastructure is not owned by commercial interests like cloud providers.
Precise definition
The Canadian sovereign AI effort defines “sovereign” in loose terms:1
a Canadian-located, Canadian-governed system that ensures data residency, operational control, and decision-making authority and agency remain in Canada
Specifically,
- Data should prioritize residency in Canada - but not all data must reside in Canada.
- Compute and storage must be owned or leased from Canadian entities.
- The physical design and access control must rest in the hands of a Canadian entity
- Components should “maximize” Canadian integration, installation, and support. Foreign-made components are OK.
HPC dressed as AI, or real AI?
I’ve noticed that the biggest sovereign AI efforts are being run much more like national HPC efforts than true AI infrastructure projects. They are commonly attached to traditional HPC organizations (universities) and have procured AI systems from traditional HPC vendors (Cray, Eviden) building traditional HPC system platforms (Cray EX, BullSequana XH3000) rather than systems optimal for AI (see HPC vs AI). This leads me to believe that “sovereign AI” is really masquerading as “HPC that can technically be used for AI as well.”